


An Actual Vampire Wouldn't Be As Bad As This

by dlynn



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-15
Updated: 2020-05-16
Packaged: 2021-03-02 20:14:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,393
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24202666
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dlynn/pseuds/dlynn
Summary: The Doctor and her friends come upon an ‘emotional vampire’ who traps them and forces them to relive their worst emotional pain. Can the Doctor find pity on her and help her find a way out of her own nightmarish situation?
Kudos: 4





	1. Chapter 1

The Doctor, Yaz, Ryan and Graham were supposed to go to Arkanin I for touristy stuff but the Tardis did its periodic thing with its crazy navigation and landed them in a big open area of a cave on an asteroid on the edge of the same system. The Doctor cautiously looks out the Tardis door and then steps out, scanning the area with her sonic. “It seems safe,” she says to the others. “Breathable Air. Nothing poisonous.” Yaz, Ryan and Graham steps out carefully into the cave. “Another roundabout from the Tardis it seems,” Ryan laments. “There are lights, Doc,” Graham helpfully points out. “Suggests someone lives here.” The Doctor replies, “It suggests that to me too. I am getting some sort of life sign from the sonic, but it’s not clear what kind or how many. Let’s take a look around, but be careful.” 

After some time spent looking around the open area in the cave, Ryan notices a shadow of someone coming from one of the side tunnels and points it out to the Doctor. A woman steps out, into the open area, looking surprised. “Who are you people?” she says. “No one should be coming here!” Yaz notices that she appears to be humanoid, but with somewhat sunken looks, bald head, and skin that’s fairly pale. The Doctor steps forward. “I’m the Doctor. These are my friends Ryan, Yaz, and Graham. We were heading to Arkanin I but my ship went off course a little and we landed here. We didn’t mean to intrude on your home. I’ll readjust my ship’s navigation and we can get out of your hair soon, so to speak. What is your name?” The woman considers the Doctor’s words. “I’m Etya. I don’t mean to be rude. You should stay for a meal.” The Doctor hesitates briefly, then replies, “Yes, we’ll stay for a meal.” Yaz seems a little puzzled about the Doctor’s sudden change of mind, but says nothing.

A little while later, the team is sitting together eating a meal that Etya has cooked up. The Doctor asks, “Etya, why are you living alone on an asteroid?” Etya replies, “I prefer to be alone. I’ve tried to do so in various places in various systems, but people keep stumbling upon me. Like you four now. My preference is to be alone as much as possible, except when I need sustainment. That way, I hurt as few people as possible” The Doctor furrows her brow at that; the others look confused as well. Etya touches the Doctor’s shoulder, as the Doctor grimaces. “You see, Doctor, I have spent many centuries wandering. I feed off people’s emotional pain.” She strokes the Doctor’s cheek and then gets in a little too close. “I can feel your centuries of pain and loneliness. Things like that feed me, sustain me.” The Doctor wants to get up, to get away, but she finds that she can’t. Neither can the rest of the team as they watch in horror. Etya continues, “How does it feel, Doctor? How does it feel to have such a lovely family suddenly ripped from you? To see their prone bodies lying lifeless on the ground?” The Doctor stiffens and starts to get emotional. “Please don’t,” she pleads to Etya. Etya continues, clearly sad, “I can only do what I’m compelled to do, Doctor. What feeds me and sustains me. It’s not personal, please remember that.” She pauses and goes silent for a moment, then continues, “Tell me, Doctor. How did it feel to lose your family like that? So suddenly. I can imagine the pain.” The Doctor shudders and starts to cry as the rest of the team looks on heartbroken, but unable to do anything. “It was so painful. I loved my family, my kids. When they died, I lost a large part of myself. It ripped a hole in my soul so large, I’ve never been able to mend it.” She continues to sob as Etya strokes her cheek, clearly getting some sort of sustainment from the exchange. Yaz is heartbroken at the sight of the Doctor in so much pain but it seems she’s unable to get up and stop Etya. Etya gets up and sits by Graham. “Oh, you’re not trying that parlor trick on me!” Graham exclaims. She does anyway, leaning her head on Graham’s shoulder. “The cancer seems like it was a scary thing,” Etya simply says. “Yes, yes it was,” Graham replies reluctantly. “I thought I was going to die. I was scared a lot. But Grace helped me through it.” Graham only realizes too late that wasn’t quite the path he should have gone. Etya hugs him a little too tightly then holds his hand. “Tell me how you felt when Grace died,” she says quietly. “It hurt so much,” Graham replies, very sadly. “I found someone special after so long being alone, and then she was gone. It hurt so bad. It still hurts.” Etya continues, “And you are still scared that the cancer is lurking, that it will come back at any time.” Graham replies, “The tests all come back fine, but it still feels like it’s waiting to pounce on me and consume me whole.” “It’s ok Granddad…,” Ryan start to reply. Etya shushes him and he reluctantly stops. “You are such a monster,” Yaz blurts out. “How can you put people through so much pain?” Ryan continues the thought, “You’re like an emotional vampire or something.” Etya responds, “Hush children. I do what I must.” Yaz and Ryan find themselves unable to continue the argument. 

After awhile, Etya sits down next to Yaz. “I wasn’t always like this,” she says quietly to Yaz after a time of silence. “My memory of my origins is hazy for reasons I don’t understand, but my people warred against each other long ago. I don’t really recall whether it was centuries or millennia ago. They warred for so long, but it didn’t seem to be enough for one or the other side to win. Bad things started to be used, like nuclear and biological weapons. Some very terrible weapons. After a time, the survivors found themselves changed.” Yaz looks at her with some pity. Etya continues, “We were no longer the normal people we were. In all that stew of horrible weapons, we became something different. We needed something more than food to survive. We found we needed to feed off of others’ emotional pain and there was a lot of it. Many of us grew disgusted with feeding off each other like that. So much so, that my people scattered to get away from each other. I’ve been running ever since, keeping in the shadows, only feeding off of others when I had to. I suspect others of my kind have been doing the same thing. It’s been a pretty lonely life. I don’t even remember the name of my world or my people, or even my original name. Sometimes I want to end it all, but I seem hard to kill. Maybe a Super Nova sun can do it.” She trails off into silence. The Doctor registers Etya’s words, though barely, as she continues to mourn her dead children.


	2. Chapter 2

Etya continues to sit beside Yaz for awhile, while stealing furtive glances at the Tardis. Finally, she asks the Doctor, “Is your ship alive? I keep getting a sense that she’s trying to talk to me, but it’s a little hard to understand.” The Doctor manages to respond, “She’s a living machine and she’s telepathic. But she lives in the past, present and future so she can be hard to figure out. Maybe you two should try for a chat.” Etya gets up and goes over to the Tardis and leans up against the door, while she seems to listen to something. “Ah, yes, I do understand you, somewhat. Do you know what I want? Maybe we can work something out.” 

She stands there for awhile seeming to listen, then goes and sits beside Ryan, touching him on the shoulder as he flinches, knowing it’s his turn now. “Ryan,” Etya says, “the loss of your mother was hard for you, wasn’t it?” “Yes,” Ryan responds. “She was too young and so was I. I miss her every day.” Etya continues, “You’ve had a hard life. Your dyspraxia, the death of your mother, your father leaving, your grandmother dying. It’s all got to be very hard.” Ryan responds, as tears run down his face, “It’s all so hard. I cried a lot. I don’t think I could have survived Nan’s death without Graham.” Graham manages a smile as he hears Ryan’s last sentence, and pats his hand, but he can’t do much more than that. Etya continues, “That man, that friend of your Mom’s, he added to the burden, didn’t he? You were only 8.” Ryan looks at her with growing alarm and Graham stiffens as he watches him. Etya continues, “Thomas. A nice friend of your Mom’s, or so she thought. Trying to make friends with you. Only he would also sneak into your room at night before he would leave…” Ryan pleads, “Stop it. You don’t need to do this.” Etya ignores him and continues, “He would put his hand under the covers and touch you.” Graham closes his eyes at the pain of it. Yaz and the Doctor know they can’t move to comfort him, but they feel his pain nonetheless. Ryan cries out, “I finally told my Mom. I told her and she believed me! She believed me and made him go away!” Etya responds, “But the damage persisted, didn’t it? Your mom made him go away but she didn’t really talk about it with you or send you to therapy. You felt even worse about yourself than before. Your confidence went even lower than it was before.” Ryan sobs as the rest of the team helplessly looks on. 

After Ryan finishes crying, the group remains silent for awhile. The Doctor speaks up, “Etya, I’ve lived a long time and will continue to do so and have had many adventures and a lot of pain. Let my friends leave and I’ll stay with you. You can feed off my pain for a very long time. By doing that, you don’t need to feed off anyone else either.” Yaz exclaims, “No Doctor!” Etya sits silent for awhile, then speaks, “Doctor, that offer speaks very highly of you. You clearly are a good person. I think I was a fairly good person before this happened to me. I wish I could be that again.” The Doctor replies, “I have a ship that can travel through time and space. If I can help you in some way, take you somewhere, I’ll do it. You may be doing terrible things to people, but clearly things happened to you to make you this way. Help me to help you find a way out of this.” Etya turns and looks at the Tardis, puzzled. She then gets up and goes over to the ship and hugs the door again. “You know exactly what I want, don’t you? Would you do it for me? Can you get me there? Would you really do that for me, after all this?” She seems to get the answer she wants and then turns to the group. “We’re going for a ride in your ship Doctor. Come on everyone, get up and get inside.” The group reluctantly gets up and files into the Tardis, with Etya following behind. Etya goes to the controls and apparently sets the destination. “Time to go Doctor,” she says. The Doctor eyes the destination, though doesn’t quite recognize it and works the controls to fly the Tardis.

Etya stands just outside the control area, facing the exit door, seemingly in communion with the Tardis, while the rest of the group huddles around the Doctor who is busy steering. “We’re here, Doctor,” Etya finally says. The Doctor “lands” the ship and waits. “You know Doctor,” Etya continues. “the previous destination I was at, before the asteroid, was on a nice little planet in another system. I had meant to be in a remote area, all alone, but as usual someone stumbled across me and I was hungry. A nice man and his wife and three kids. He seemed nice enough, but it turned out he had a very dark past he was trying to live down. His wife knew a little bit about it, his children none at all. But it all came out as I fed. The killings, the cons. All the harm he caused others until he decided to reform. His wife and kids were horrified. I fed for two days off him. Then after I was done, I fled from that system and ran for awhile, finally settling on the asteroid. I told myself that I would only feed when I had to and stay away from others as much as possible. It seemed unfortunate that you stumbled across me, but now I see that your ship found me on purpose, for my salvation. You are all released. I thank you for your kindness Doctor.” She looks up at the ceiling, and apparently addresses the Tardis. “Do it. I’m ready.” The exit doors suddenly whip open and Etya is sucked out via a vacuum corridor into space, into the maw of a sun going super nova. The team holds onto anything they can grab and the Doctor looks on horrified. She closes the doors, then brings up a monitor to see if she can track Etya. She manages to get her location and vitals, but the information then blinks out of existence. We then see from Etya’s perspective, as she floats in space, rapidly burning up from the sun, until there is nothing left of her.

The team stands for a time in silence and in shock. The Doctor finally moves and goes back to the controls, setting a destination for away from the sun. “So,” she says to the others. “do you want to try again for Arkanin I or just go home for awhile?” Yaz finally speaks up, “Maybe we should just go to a quiet place to rest and contemplate?” The others nod and the Doctor sets a destination and pilots the ship.


End file.
